


Hopscotch

by sowell



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 02:32:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sowell/pseuds/sowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean can't stop counting. Post-8.01</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hopscotch

Dean counts his steps when they’re walking side by side. Sam sees his lips moving absently, eyebrows pulled together in concentration, and he leans in.  
  
“What?” he asks.  
  
Dean jerks away subtly – because that’s a thing he does now – and looks up. “What what?”  
  
“You’re mumbling,” Sam says patiently. He’s learned a lot about patience over the last year.  
  
Dean looks confused, and Sam realizes he didn’t even know he was doing it. Just another idiosyncrasy to add to the list. One more thing that makes Dean not Dean.  
  
“Nevermind,” Sam says.

  
*****

  
He notices it again when they’re leaving a government building in downtown Houston, sweating in their suits. Dean counts, and steps over every crack in the sidewalk.  
  
“What the hell?” Sam says. “Did you develop OCD down there?”  
  
“And fuck you, too,” Dean says, without missing a beat. The insult doesn’t even register on his face, always hard and drawn these days. Sam still can’t get used to the darkness of his tan, the way his hair is shaggy and hacked off, not military-short. His appearance is like a decal for all the things that are broken inside him, a vague warning label.  
  
“You’re doing it again. Are you counting steps?”  
  
Dean blows out a breath. “Maybe.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because it’s fun,” Dean snaps. “Why do you think?”  
  
Sam stops. “I honestly have no idea,” he says. Honesty is the best policy. He knows this, because Amelia taught him. She made him whole again over the last year, filled in all the little cracks that years of hunting shoved into him. He thinks of himself before Dean disappeared, jagged and uneven; twelve months later he’s been polished clean.  
  
So he stops, and waits for Dean to look at him.  
  
Dean’s jaw works. “It’s how I…kept track. In Purgatory. No mile markers or anything. No maps. So I had to count. Got in the habit, I guess.”  
  
“Oh.” Sam blinks at him for a second. Dean’s chin is tilted out in a challenge. “I get it,” Sam says, even though he doesn’t.

  
*****

  
He buys Dean one of those watches that counts your steps and measures your heart rate. “So you don’t have to do it yourself,” he says encouragingly.  
  
Dean looks touched and exasperated in equal measure. “These are for housewives trying to lose weight,” he says.  
  
“Still,” Sam insists. “Maybe it will help.” He’s not going to let the snap in Dean’s eyes goad him. He can’t ever understand what Dean lived through in Purgatory, but he can do…this. He can try.  
  
“Yeah,” Dean relents. “Maybe. Thanks.”  
  
He wears the watch, but he still counts.

  
*****

  
Sam remembers waking up on certain mornings over the last year, sunny mornings, and thinking everything had a fuzzy edge to it. The neat trappings of their bedroom, Amelia’s curls, his own skin. The world had a layer of gauze over it, waiting to be stripped away.  
  
 _Not my life_ , he remembers thinking, and then shaking the thought free, because it was wrong. Dean was gone. Everyone was gone, and it was as much his life as anything was going to be, ever again. There was nothing left to pull the rug out from under him. No further to fall.  
  
He wakes up now, and everything is fierce and sharp and too solid to be anything but real. Dean is always there, awake, hands and eyes weaving with purpose. He’s seen Dean sleep three times since his return and made the mistake of waking him only once. Dean had turned on him, brilliantly savage, had him pinned by the throat in two seconds flat. Sam is used to Dean’s warrior instincts, but it had taken him ten full seconds to recognize Sam this time around, ten seconds to realize where he was and pull back.  
  
He hadn’t apologized.

  
*****

  
“Quit it,” Sam says shortly, because he’s patient, but Dean’s ever-moving lips are a constant distraction. Half the time Sam thinks he’s being addressed and starts to respond, only to realize that Dean’s mind is somewhere else, lost to a year’s worth of habits.  
  
Dean presses his lips together and stops.  
  
They walk in silence for a few steps, and Sam starts to feel guilty, so he offers a quiet, “Sorry.”  
  
“It’s fine,” Dean says gruffly. Ten minutes later he’s counting again, and Sam doesn’t say anything.  
  
It’s not just the counting. Sam sees him marking time as the days go by, carved into the wooden hilt of the strange weapon he brought back with him. Dean has always been able to lose himself in mindless activity when he needs it – television or pool games or sex. He still tries, but he’s too restless. He can’t sit still long enough to finish a sitcom, can’t take enough time to con his way through a pool game. He plays like he hunts: fast and brutal and without compunction. Sam doesn’t even want to contemplate what his sex life is like.  
  
“You need to talk about it,” Sam says. “You’re gonna drive yourself nuts.”  _And me_ , he thinks silently.  
  
“What do you want me to say?” Dean asks flatly. “Want me to describe the scenery? Explain how many times I almost lost a limb? It sucked, Sam. And it’s over.”  
  
It’s not over, but Sam doesn’t say that. He pulls at his hair in frustration instead. “Tell me  _something_ , “ he explodes. “Because this strong silent thing isn’t working for either of us.”  
  
And damn it, he hadn’t meant to do that.  _Patience patience patience_  has been circling his brain in a loop, but Dean could annoy the patience out of a saint. There’s been tension snapping taut between them for weeks now, and Sam isn’t sure what to expect from its sudden release.  
  
Dean gives him a long, hard stare, then looks away. “It’s thirteen steps from here to the door,” he says finally. “Twelve for you. Ten to the bathroom, seventy-eight to the Impala, two hundred four to the office.”  
  
“Jesus,” Sam says.  
  
“We walked ten thousand four hundred twenty-one steps yesterday, including in and out of that diner we ate at. I avoided four traps.”  
  
“Potholes,” Sam supplies.  
  
“Whatever,” Dean says impatiently. “Do you get it now? I can’t turn it off. So get used to it or get gone.”  
  
Dean has done this before, laid out an ultimatum between them like he means it. Sometimes, Sam takes him up on it. Sometimes, he’s thought of it as permanent. Dean never has.  
  
Sam throws Dean’s jacket at him, and Dean catches it with narrowed eyes. “Let’s go,” he says.  
  
They drive down to the local bar, a ten-minute trip as far as Sam’s concerned. Maybe Dean’s counting in seconds – how the hell should he know? He can’t wrap his head around his newly precise brother.  
  
They park on the far side of the lot, away from the cluster of bikes and the smokers crowding the entrance.  
  
“Okay,” Sam says. “Walk me through it.”  
  
Dean’s eyeing him warily. “I don’t get it,” he says.  
  
“Nothing to get. You don’t want to talk about it? Fine. But if we’re gonna be hunting together, I need to know what’s going through your head, or it’s dangerous for both of us.”  
  
Dean sighs and rolls his shoulders. It’s an old trick – masking therapy as a hunting necessity – and Dean probably should have figured it out by now. Maybe he doesn’t want to, Sam thinks. Maybe he needs the masquerade, and maybe he always will.  
  
Dean estimates the distance from the car to the entrance, the entrance to the bar, the bar to the pool table, the pool table to the restroom. He’s usually off by one or two steps. Never more than five.  
  
“You know, we could take you on the road,” Sam says, and Dean’s mouth quirks into a smile. Weary and faint, but real.  
  
“Party tricks for the hunting lifestyle,” Dean says. “I bet we’d make bank.”  
  
They clink beer bottles, and it feels forced, but it’s better than the memory of Dean’s hand around his throat, no recognition in his eyes.  
  
The lighting in the bar is terrible, a dim and flickering pink, meant to flatter and conceal. It’s weird that Dean seems painted in bright colors in the middle of it, saturated and solid, green eyes and smooth skin and the collar of his jacket bunched just so. For the first time in a year, Sam feels rooted.  
  
Dean counts their footsteps back to the car, and Sam counts silently beside him, shoulders pressed together.


End file.
